Cancel via paypal or admin panel?

Scenario:

Member paid $1 for trial, then $59 for a yearly membership. I decided to refund their $59 payment. Should I go to paypal and do this?

Should I cancel their Recurring Payment via Paypal?
Or should I just delete the user via the admin panel?

What would be a better way to handle this?

If I refund via papal, I noticed s2m will automatically revoke access, which is great. But will it cancel the Recurring Payment profile, or would they be charged when it’s time for renewal?

Thanks!

Hi Adam. Thanks for writing in.

Should I cancel their Recurring Payment via Paypal?

Yes. You should issue a refund and cancel things on the PayPal side. s2Member is notified of these changes behind-the-scene, and the appropriate actions will be taken automatically on the WordPress side of things, based on what occurs at PayPal, and also based on your configuration of s2Member -> PayPal Options -> EOT Behavior.

One way to build confidence in s2Member’s handling of these events, is to enable logging for your installation. Please check your Dashboard under: s2Member -> PayPal Options -> Account Details -> Logging/Debugging.

Or should I just delete the user via the admin panel?

You can certainly do that, but it’s not necessary. s2Member handles this for you.

If I refund via papal, I noticed s2m will automatically revoke access, which is great. But will it cancel the Recurring Payment profile, or would they be charged when it’s time for renewal?

If billing is cancelled on the PayPal side, that’s it. s2Member doesn’t do any of it’s own billing. It relies solely on your Payment Gateway integration. If billing is cancelled at your Payment Gateway, all that’s left to configure is the Customer’s on-site access, which is where the PayPal IPN service comes in, and this is handled seamlessly between PayPal and s2Member as I mentioned above.

To answer your question… No. Refunding a specific transaction does NOT tell s2Member to cancel a Recurring Profile, you will need to do that yourself, from inside your PayPal Pro account. Then s2Member will be notified by PayPal via the IPN service.

Great. So just to be clear, and for future reference:

If a user no longer wants to be a member, and ask my support team to ‘let them out’, assuming they did not request a refund, just to stop the billing, I just need to go to paypal and cancel the Recurring Payments Profile, right?

Hi Adam,

That is correct. :)

Awesome, thanks!